In the third week of President Donald Trump’s government shutdown over his insistence that a border wall be funded, Fox News’ Fox & Friends is filling the airwaves with seemingly chaotic images of migrant caravans to build support for the wall, which, according to co-host Steve Doocy, is just what the president wants.

On January 9, Doocy claimed that Trump is “trying to get the people in the middle, the independents, who have not taken a side yet, to look at images like that and think, ‘OK, is that a bad thing for the country?’”

Steve Doocy: President Trump is counting on the images you see on Fox News to convince you that a border wall is necessary pic.twitter.com/59CF3XRn5m

Accordingly, the January 10 edition of Fox & Friends aired a lot of b-roll footage of what appear to be migrant caravans. The clips showed migrants:

Clashing with law enforcement:

Climbing or attacking fences and walls:

Gathering in large groups:

Walking:

Fox & Friends has apparently influenced immigration policy with its b-roll choices before: On October 26, Doocy said that “images of the caravan breaking through the gate and the fence in Guatemala into Mexico” -- images that aired heavily on the show and elsewhere on the network -- “so alarmed the White House that they're trying to figure out some way to do something about the caravan in spite of the law.” Three days later, the Defense Department announced that it was sending 5,200 troops to the border to stop the caravan.

The Trump administration drew media criticism in February for a misleading claim that 10 terrorists were intercepted crossing the U.S.-Mexico border each day in 2017. The claim has now resurfaced as “almost 4,000 terrorists” throughout 2018. It is still misleading.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders appeared on the January 4 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends to defend President Donald Trump’s stance on the ongoing government shutdown. She told the hosts that a border wall is needed because “last year alone, there were nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists” arrested along the U.S.-Mexico border.

About an hour later, White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley made the same claim on another Fox show, America’s Newsroom. Gidley said that there were “almost 4,000 terrorists, known or suspected, coming across the border” last year.

Pence’s assertion was roundly debunked as a false claim last year. PolitiFact rated his initial claim “pants on fire” because the figure he referenced appeared to be for all points of entry to the country, not just the southern border. Similarly, The Washington Post said Pence’s later claim “quickly falls apart upon further inspection.” A Pence spokesperson also “tacitly” acknowledged to the Post that the vice president misstated the statistic.

On MSNBC Live with Stephanie Ruhle, national security reporter Julia Ainsley also noted that the White House “is likely rounding from this figure that we’ve heard from the administration before. ... What they’re taking that from is the number of all people who are stopped at all ports, especially airports.” Ainsley said that Sanders “seems to be rounding [the figure] and especially playing it off the border to make it seem as if these are people crossing the border to make the case for the president’s wall. When, in fact, we’re talking about airports where a wall wouldn’t do anything.”

Update (1/7/19): On January 6, Sanders appeared on Fox News Sunday to again push the myth that 4,000 suspected terrorists were attempting to cross the southern border. Sanders brought up the statistic after host Chris Wallace quoted the State Department’s statement that there is “no credible evidence of any terrorist coming across the border from Mexico.” When Sanders tried to bring up the statistic, Wallace said, "I know the statistic -- I didn’t know if you were gonna use it, but I studied up on this," and pointed out that “they're not coming across the southern border, Sarah; they’re coming and they are being stopped at airports.” Sanders ignored the factual basis of this claim, saying that terrorists “come by air, by land, and by sea.” In reality, zero immigrants have been arrested on terrorism charges while attempting to cross the southern border in recent years.